Pastoral Support Team | Whitefield Primary School

At Whitefield, our pastoral support team is made up of Mr Jackson (SENDcO) and Mrs Natalie Pearce (Learning Mentor). Mrs Foster works closely with the team to ensure that any child or family needing support gets the help and support they need.

The aims of pastoral support:

To ensure that our school vision ‘Healthy Hearts, Healthy Minds, Healthy Bodies’ is encouraged for all children.
To support children to develop resilience, good self esteem, social skills and to help them to understand and express their emotions appropriately.
To support and maintain a nurturing environment in school where children feel safe, valued and encouraged.
To promote a growth mindset in children by encouraging children to learn from their mistakes in a positive way.
To promote well being for every child in school and to support them in learning how to reflect on their own personal well being. To help children to learn what steps they can take to improve and maintain their own well being so they are better able to cope with difficult situations.
To work with parents to help to overcome the difficulties and barriers to learning the child is facing and to reassure parents that their child will be given the appropriate support.
To make sure that there is continuity in support for the child and family by working with parents, external agencies, support staff and other schools.

The role of the Pastoral Support Team:

To support and nurture individual or small groups of children who may need a little extra support with issues such as: friendships, self esteem, confidence, bereavement, worries, anger and strong emotions.
To listen to and work with parents to support and help to overcome any difficulties and barriers to learning.
To work with staff in school to ensure support for the child and family is consistent.
To signpost families to the appropriate external agencies if further help is needed. This could be counselling for the child, family mediation support, housing advice, food banks, etc. To complete or help to complete paperwork for any referral that is made.
To work with external agencies to help them to support the child and family.